Debate contribution: Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers
Debate contribution by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on .
- MLA
- Dr Steve Aiken OBE
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 27 October 2022
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Assembly Business
- Heading
- Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4178282
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you very much, Mr Acting Speaker, for controlling this rather unruly event. The people of Northern Ireland will be watching this today, and many will be saying, "What are they doing? What is happening?", because here we are, squabbling back and forth, when we have crises. We have a crisis in our healthcare system and in our welfare system, and we have an energy crisis. All those things are impacting on us, yet we are squabbling and taking lumps out of each other. We have to ask ourselves this: what are we really doing? We are supposed to be representing the people of Northern Ireland. We are supposed to be representing our constituents. In 2016, when Mike Nesbitt asked me to stand to be an MLA, I did so because I wanted to make Northern Ireland a much better place. I wanted Northern Ireland to be a place where everybody could work together for the benefit of all our people. Since that time, I think, of the six years that we have been in and out of here, four of those years have been completely nugatory and pointless, because absolutely nothing happened. We had three years when the party opposite, Sinn Féin, held the place down. I do not know how long the Assembly will be down now. Let us be honest: this might be the last time that any of us will speak in the Assembly. It will be a long time indeed before the Assembly comes back, I believe. There is a real issue with the protocol, and pretending time and time again that you can ignore unionist concerns about the protocol does not work. It has to be dealt with, and, if we are not complaining about it, who is standing up to make that happen? I do not say that because I believe that what the DUP is doing is right, but I can speak for all unionists who have real concerns about the protocol. That must be sorted, and it will be sorted only when people start listening to the real concerns of the people of Northern Ireland — not just unionists but all people. We have to do that. I find it absolutely incredible that the Secretary of State will spend about £6·5 million more of public money on an election that, frankly, people in Northern Ireland do not want. I am even more incredulous about another issue, but I should not be surprised, bearing in mind that the Secretary of State's Government have wasted £35 billion in the last three or four weeks through complete ineptness. There is a lack of vision and a lack of understanding, but I find it absolutely incredible to hear some people say that one of the solutions is likely to be some form of joint authority. Trying to score points and raise tensions at present does not work. The people of Northern Ireland are angry. You will detect from my tone that I am not exactly happy with what is happening here either, because we have a job to do, and we should be doing that job.
No, not at the moment. The real issue that we have is to make sure that we restore trust in the institutions and in democracy. We have to restore trust. We have to be back. Regardless of what happens and of whether we have an election — even if we have an election and come back — can we commit ourselves to not having more and more polarisation and more and more whataboutery? Why can we not do something to make Northern Ireland work effectively? That is what we need to do. That is why I think that Mike Nesbitt is the person to be Speaker of the Assembly. I want to see him take his vision and move that for all of us to where we need to go. I am probably the only person who has not used his entire allocation. Maybe somebody else can make more sense of this place — I cannot any more.
679 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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